Wikipedia talk:Outlines/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Tasks

• Clarify OOK's use as a table of contents and how that relates to core policies
• Write the section "How to develop a good outline"
• Summarize and split off the following sections:
  • Wikipedia:Comparison of Wikipedia's and Britannica's outlines of knowledge - done

top of article reference to outline is unnecessary spam

I recently note the following line on several articles:

For a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of X. (Hidden) <!- LEAVE THIS LINE IN PLACE as it leads to the page that serves as the table of contents for this subject. Tables of contents always belong at the front of the subject material. Thank you.-->

I think this is not ok for several reasons:

1. The line is distracting from the article; the readers is here to read the body text. Disambiguation links are different as they help people looking for something completely ELSE from the current article. The proper place for such ADDITIONAL information as about outlines is somewhere at the back, not the front.
2. In the absence of policies proscribing such a line it is up to the editors of an article to decide how it looks like. The outline project is way too much an umbrella project to actually adopt even its own outlines, let alone other articles and should therefore take an extremely modest position. The hidden comment however, implicitly, claims ownership of the article. Ownership is against Wiki core policies, and even if it was not, it has responsibility; i.e. that you guys fully adopt the article and edit its content in a highly constructive way.

In other words, please stop this. If you want to refer people to outlines, put it at the bottom of the article. Arnoutf (talk) 17:24, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

The outlines are like menus that allow the reader the opportunity to select what he wants to read about the subject to fill his mental appetite. Placing the link to a subject's outline at the end of the article is like offering him the menu after he has eaten his meal.

You mentioned the "reader is here to read the body text". That is not necessarily so. The reader is there probably because he typed the subject's name into Google or into Wikipedia's search box. He is looking for information on the subject. Format is unspecified.

We have 2 core pages on major subjects: the article and the outline. That's ambiguity, and the choice must be made clear.

Placing a hatnote to an outline on the subject's article lets the reader know about the other core article on the subject, before he potentially wastes his time wading through the wrong one.

It's usually best to consult a map before you start your journey. That's one of the functions of outlines: they serve as site maps of Wikipedia's coverage of each subject. The hatnote makes the "map" easily available. Nobody searches for "Outline of subject", because they don't know it exists.

The hatnote solves this problem.

The Transhumanist 23:25, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I know you are a driving force behind the Outline project, and I think it has some merit. However I think your statement " We have 2 core pages on major subjects: the article and the outline" is really overdoing it. I have found no evidence outside the Outine project that the Outlines are part of "core" of Wikipedia. Of course if you can point me to an agreement/policy where it is named as such I am happy to reconsider.

With placing the doubt at the "core" of the outlines, all of your following statements make less sense. If outlines are considered additional materials for further reading (on detail level), as I consider them; there is no longer a problem of "wading" through the core article. You will need to have some idea of the core story, before you are able to contextualise/interpret the more detailed levels to which an Outline gives access.

Also your analogy with maps goes wrong in that case. It is not always best to consult a map before you go on a journey. If you want to experience the atmosphere of a place (say Rome; or a natural park) it maybe best to wander around for a bit first, and only once you have the big picture take the map and look for some interesting, but rather specific landmarks (e.g. the largest tree of the forest, or the wishing well).

One other issue I have with this, is that by placing so much emphasis on the outlines being a second core element; a reader should be able to blindly assume that if there are 2 core articles with complementary information, they fullfill at least 2 requirement

1. There is not a single bit of contradiction between the two core articles (prose and outline). This is obviously a maintenance nightmare; and I place the challenge with the outline project (as you promote the hatnote) to make sure that at no time contradiction between outlines and their topics exist. Otherwise the hatnote is (implicitly) promising something it cannot do.
2. The quality of both articles is about equal; or at least the outline referred to in a hatline should at least be of eqaul quality as the article it is placed in. Without this information, the reader does not have all information to make an informed choice and may end up with navigating away from a well written article to a really bad outline, which would be bad. In other words, an outline referred to in a hatline should have a quality class at least equal to the article of which it is a hatline. Again, a lot of responsibility goes to the outline project to make sure it is.

By placing references to the outline at the bottom all these issues are solved, as in that case it is merely "further reading". Less ambitious compared to "core" but something that you can reasonably live up to.

A final PS: In the hidden comment it states that an outline is a table of contents of the subject. This can only be true if the Outline has the exact same structure as the TOC structure of the "core" article. Please rephrase that in any case. Arnoutf (talk) 08:40, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

When I mentioned "core", I was writing in common English, not specialized wiki-jargon. Sorry for the confusion. Let me clarify what I meant...

By "core", I was referring to scope, with respect to the subjects. Both the article and outline on a subject are a top-level or all-encompassing page with respect to that subject. They each form a "core" for the subject. Think of an apple.

And while they may not be part of Wikipedia's "Core" WikiProject, they are part of Wikipedia's "core" structure, as the OOK is a central component of Wikipedia, being part of its Contents system (a link to which is included on the menu on the sidebar which appears on every page of the encyclopedia, and another link on the Main Page itself. With respect to Wikipedia, you can't get more central or "core" than that!).

The hatnote is especially useful for those with some familiarity with a subject, who may be interested in seeing what we offer about it. It is also very useful to those who aren't sure what they are looking for. The hatnote, which offers a topical guide to the subject's overall coverage on Wikipedia, provides readers with an opportunity to overview the subject before they get bogged down in prose. And it lets them see the "big picture" so they don't get lost.

Concerning your requirements:

1. You stated that the hatnote implicitly makes a promise not to present contradictions with the article. That just isn't true. Each outline is a list of articles on Wikipedia. There is no guarantee that they will be error-free. Contradictions are just one type of error, and like other errors they need to be corrected wherever they happen to pop up. No promise has been made anywhere on Wikipedia that it is free of any type of errors. On the contrary, it acknowledges that it is both a work-in-progress and an open project, and errors are inevitable though easily correctible in most cases. I, and the rest of the members of the OOK WikiProject will do our best to correct any and all errors as we become aware of them.
2. You mentioned that you believed quality was the key factor for placing a link to an outline at the top of an article. Perhaps relevance and usefulness are important too? If we place the links where they are most relevant, according to the function the outlines are intended to serve, then more editors will find the pages and improve their quality. Traffic drives improvement.

Concerning your final P.S., the outlines are topical guides. They serve as tables of contents to the subjects, not to the subject's main article. The subjects on Wikipedia are comprised of many articles, and the outlines are a guide to those. As per your request, I've reworded the hatnote for clarity:

For a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of X. (Hidden) <!- PLEASE LEAVE THIS LINE IN PLACE as it leads to the page that serves as the table of contents for Wikipedia's overall coverage of this subject. Thank you.-->

I hope I've answered your reservations to your satisfaction.

The Transhumanist 22:44, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: I noticed you reverted a hatnote which referred to the "front of the book". Well, most encyclopedias consist of many volumes (of books), and many subjects on Wikipedia are the equivalent of volumes. It's logical to interpret the article with the subject's name as the front of its "book" in Wikipedia. -TT   22:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Some mixed reactions to your comments.

• "quality was the key factor for placing a link to an outline at the top of an article. Perhaps relevance and usefulness are important too?". I fully agree, I think you have sufficiently convinced me of the relevance and usefulness.

My point is that everything is gradual. For something that is highly visual (ie placed in a hatnote), relevance and usefulness has to be beyond debate and very high. Something of medium to low quality can never have a very high, beyond debate level of relevance and usefulness. So in that light, indeed I think quality is the key.

This also refers to the issue of contradiction as a quality issue, directly related to relevance and usefulnes. Personally my main worry is about the opening paragraph of the outlines; and the (rather extensive) country infoboxes. My advice would be to keep the introductions as short as possible and only report undeniable facts. Even then keeping track of changes over the two articles will require substantial maintenance effort; especially with regard to the infoboxes. Additionally, and that is a more central contradiction issue, the structure of the article, and the focus placed on issues in that article may substantially differ from those in the outlines (e.g. in the mild climate Netherlands (highest point 322 m ~1000ft) - glaciers are irrelevant, land reclamation/sea defense (polders and dikes) is not - for the mountain mini state Andorra (pop 89,000) on the other hand rivers, ports and military just don't exist).

This all leads me to repeat my earlier conclusions:

• Outlines can have added value, as they provide a structured overview of related articles
• Without the guarantee of stable, high quality, very frequently updated/maintained outlines, these outlines can still be highly valuable supporting material for the main article; but not to an extent they should be advertised as equal importance (the hatnote issue)
• Where Britannica and other edited encyclopedias have an editorial board that can make sure these type of structures are stable, and as frequently updated as the related articles; Wikipedia's rather anarchic structure (for all the good that it brings in terms of people available and quick improvements) is very ill-suited to ever accomodate the guarantee for stable and frequently updated articles. Therefore, in my opinion the outlines as positioned now a aiming for an unrealistic level of ambition.

Extreme summary of the above: "Outlines: Yes; but it is a maintenance risk, and the project should have a more realistic ambition level". Arnoutf (talk) 08:37, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

All Wikipedia's pages share the same maintenance risk. And almost nobody believed the OOK project would get this far. Not only that, but OOK's development is accelerating. Realistic is relative. It's not like we're shooting for 3,000,000 articles.  ;)

When I proposed that the "Contents" link be added to the sidebar so it could be seen from every page on Wikipedia, some people had doubts, citing the quality level of the contents pages. Fortunately, the community did not agree. Shenme aptly concluded:

A 'normal' wiki usually doesn't have a core structure, and so people don't expect it, but Wikipedia has quite a lot of material, and various ways of organizing it. Having a link in the sidebar to the contents page will help people to discover what organization there is. (whether perfect or not a separate topic). And, actually, pointing people to the contents page and getting their resulting comments will improve the page. Don't wait for the improvements first... Shenme 04:47, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Form follows function, not the other way around. Wikipedia is a work in progress. Our readers know this. That's not something to be ashamed of. Every reader is a potential editor. "If you build it, they will come" (but only if they can find it).  :)

The Transhumanist 19:44, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

This seems like an unhelpful misuse of hatnotes; hatnotes are usually for disambiguation purposes, and may be skimmed or ignored by someone already familiar with Wikipedia structure, who knows they're at the right article. WP:RELATED specifically says not to use hatnotes to link to related articles - I'd have thought a "See also" link, a "seemain" template or a navigation template would be more appropriate.

And for what it's worth, "topical" is a little ambiguous, as an adjective - I think the "relevant to current events" meaning is more commonly understood than the "arranged by topic" one, and it's not immediately clear what a "topical guide" is going to be. --McGeddon (talk) 09:12, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Throwing my two cents into the midst of all this- I agree with the argument that a hatnote can only even begin to be considered when the pertaining outline's quality matches or surpasses that of the main article. I don't think it'd be constructive to immediately direct the average casual reader to an underdeveloped/incomplete outline when the article itself would better portray the information.

However, as of right now there are a handful of cases where the two are evenly matched- and then we come to the debate of how we should be thinking about information dissemination. There are a number of people (and I will include myself in this category), who will very rarely actually read the entire body of a full-length article on a general subject for whatever reason, and are much better suited for something more structured and less word-heavy such as an outline. Treating main articles and their corresponding outlines as being anything other than complementary ignores the fact that people learn in different ways. Perhaps we (the wikipedia community), should give more thought into treating outlines and other types of lists as an equally valid vector through information could pass. I read more than my fair share of scientific/mathematic articles on here, and to be honest most editors are not the best at presenting technical information, and their talents could possibly be better used in a format other than prose (such as an outline).

On a less philosophical note and coming back to the point, I think that a tailor-made "seemain" template at the end of the lead-in paragraph would strike a balance between the two- giving the reader the option to continue with the prose or go over to the outline. In line with the main wikipedia editing policy stated above, some collaboration should be done between the general wikipedia editing community and WPOOK members in developing some quality/relevance guidelines that an outline must follow in order to remain up top. If it doesn't, it should remain in the "see also". I also agree with the ambiguity of "topical", perhaps there exists a better way to get across this WP's true intent? Regardless, I think a consensus should be made soon and a section dedicated on this project page to the topic. Minnecologies (talk) 21:57, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Agree. People should find links to outlines on the contents page(s), and links to the article that the outline covers, but not the link to the outline on the main article.--Unionhawk ^{Talk E-mail Review} 17:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Naming outlines

The naming standard states: "The title is never plural"! I just created Outline of sharks! I did not read the instruction :-) but followed the example of Outline of ants. Now checking at Portal:Contents/Outline_of_knowledge, I find many more like Outline of crafts , Outline of sports and so on. Should we rename them all or update the naming statndard? --Stefan ^talk 12:48, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Please no. That only applied to the word "Outline". It isn't grammatically correct to say "Outline of shark".  :) Thank you for finding the ambiguity. I've fixed that part of the instructions so it is clearer. Let me know if it makes sense now. The Transhumanist 00:27, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

OK makes sense, did not understand that when I read the previous version. Makes much more sense now, thanks!!! --Stefan ^talk 06:02, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Reading the previous version I do not understand how I could missunderstand :-), but nevermind it is even clearer now!!! --Stefan ^talk 06:07, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

move this out of main namespace please

These "outlines" are a WP:CFORK nightmare. They are positively harmful. If you keep them in Portal: namespace, fine, I'll grit my teeth and accept them. But there is no way they can be kept in article namespace. Simply none, excepting the case that there is verifiable literature discussing notable outlines, viz. the hypothetical case that outlines themselves are the encyclopedic topic. --dab (𒁳) 09:31, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

It isn't a WP:CFORK, as I or anyone at WP:WPOOK (where you should probably take up this argument instead of here) will tell you, outlines are helpful, informative and useful. Have you ever trawled through an article wanting to find something, got to the end and still not found it - use an outline! Every concievable link relevant to the topic, displayed in an orderly manner, unprecedented and unique (hence in my opinion not a WP:CFORK). Although I see that you are already aware of it as you have posted in various places before and always got a positive response from someone. So, as you are already aware, they're a type of list, and fall under WP:LISTS.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Highfields (talk • contribs) 12:28, 6 July 2009

Dbachmann, the term "Outline of" in the titles is not the subject of these articles, but the articles' type. Type designators have been used in the titles of list articles since Wikipedia's beginning. "List of", "Timeline of", "Index of", "Glossary of", and "Outline of", are various names for lists. The type portion of list articles' titles is not subject to the Notability guideline and never has been. Notability applies to the subject of an article, not the article's type. And as a type of article, lists are presented in the main namespace, and as far as I know, always have been. The Transhumanist 17:51, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I am not objecting to list articles, I am objecting to yet another kind of "type article", and at that one that doesn't have any purpose other than repeating the scope of another article in list form. Look, I do not see why you insist this needs to be in article space. You fail to present one reason why this should not reside in Portal: namespace like all other indexing stuff. You do not seem to want to understand the problems you are creating, especially with difficult-to-maintain topics such as Kosovo.

This isn't proper. WP:WPOOK appears to be a project that generates more problems than it is worth. I only even came across your activities because you go out of your way to inappropriately tout whatever it is you think you are doing in hatnotes and at the top of talkpages. In short, you are not contributing any content, you are listing existing content. And yet you insist on making a big fuss in advertising your non-contributions wherever possible. Where is the community consensus for this huge number of new "type articles"? You are literally duplicating Wikipedia, creating a (crappy) shadow version of each bona-fide article. What on earth is the merit in that??

If you can agree to restrict your activities to Portal: namespace, your project can coexist peacefully with the actual encyclopedia. If you keep trying to let it spill over into main namespace, you will be asked to satisfy the criteria for inclusion, viz. WP:NOTE. Any article in main namespace needs to fulfil this. You have caused tremendous damage by creating literally hundreds of content forks. I would expect some minimal amount if collaboration in trying to clean up the mess you have created. --dab (𒁳) 18:45, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

This argument is starting to get is redundant. Every point you've brought up has already been addressed. I don't know what vendetta you have against outlines, but it's tiring and improper. As far as I've seen, you are the only wikipedian who's shown such vehement opposition to the concept. If the outlines are such a problem, don't you think there'd be more of an uproar in the community? Perhaps you'd like to review WP:TEDIOUS in the meantime.

On a more constructive note- perhaps the WP:OOK members could consider keeping rough outlines in draft space until filled out to a TBD point of completion. If nothing else, it'd be nice to not have to see the word crappy ever used on wikipedia. Minnecologies (talk) 21:01, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Well said Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 14:27, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Minnecologies.

Dbachman, your post reads like a threat. I welcome all constructive criticism of outlines. It helps them get better. Vague criticisms are useless.

These are list articles, built in accordance with Wikipedia's list guidelines, and quite proper. They used to be called "List of basic x topics" or "List of x topics", which have been around as long as Wikipedia. And if you look at lists carefully, you'll see that there are two main types of list articles on Wikipedia: outlines (structured lists) and indexes (alphabetical lists). These types of list articles have been on Wikipedia since the beginning; only the names have changed. Previously both types were competing for the same names ("List of") which created a problem, with the two sets of lists clashing whenever someone wanted to create a list of one type when the other type already existed under that name. Differentiating list types has a long precedent on Wikipedia (including "Glossary of" and "Timeline of").

You stated "You fail to present one reason why this should not reside in Portal: namespace like all other indexing stuff." Yes I have, many times, in many places. But you have not bothered to familiarize yourself with structured lists and their history before going off half-cocked attacking them. Their location has been discussed ad nauseam, and the consensus is that they belong in the main namespace.

You've also made a massive misassumption and presented the factual error that most "indexing stuff" resides in portal space. Portals are a minor component of Wikipedia's overall navigation system. There are more outlines (structured lists) than there are portals (not all outlines have been renamed to "Outline of" yet), and more indexes (alphabetical lists) by an even greater margin. Category pages, which currently make up the most extensive indexing system, number in the tens of thousands (or more?), while there's only about 600 portals. Infoboxes, navigation templates, and see also sections also far outnumber portals, and those are all displayed in article space. Besides all that, the primary purpose of portals isn't indexing, but presenting excerpts, like a Reader's Digest, modeled after Wikipedia's Main Page, to be "main pages" for specific subjects. Dbachman, you are either ignoring the facts (and are lying), or you do not know what you are talking about. Either way, you are wasting our time. Please stop.

You've claimed that the outlines are causing problems ("more problems than they are worth"), but you haven't pointed out what they are. Nor have you explained how these problems (whatever they are) are any different from other problems on Wikipedia that are handled in the due course of editing and further contribution. More people than ever before are editing and improving outlines, making them better as we discuss them. And it is only reasonable to expect that more and more editors will join the effort as time goes on, improving outlines further still. Your gripes appear to be empty rhetoric (like your chide that outlines are "non-contributions", and your statement that these are "spilling over" into article space even though that's where they already are. How can something in article space spill over into article space? You are not making any sense.)

By the way, I also have an objection. I object to your approach, in which you have ignored the points others have raised, and without addressing them, continued to pommel us across the Wikipedia community with your anti-outline rhetoric and dogma. For example, you never answered Willscrlt's reply to your "Shadow Wikipedia" alarmist posting at WP:ANI. He stated:

I find this whole discussion disturbing, because there is an obvious negative/anti-cabalistic POV being expressed by naming this notice topic as a "shadow" Wikipedia. Most paper encyclopedias have indexes or outlines that help people quickly find pertinent information and directs them to the more detailed articles in the body of the encyclopedia. I know that Wikipedia is WP:NOT a paper encyclopedia, but that's no reason to dismiss good ideas that help visitors locate information and gives more access to articles that are sometimes difficult to locate without already having considerable knowledge in a topic.

Dbachmann, you never answered him or addressed his points. Here's another, posted by Skomorokh, asking you to clarify your position:

:Could you clarify what exactly it is about these types of pages that violate WP:CFORK? That guideline is primarily concerned with the phenomena of POV forking and unintentional duplication, which are not issues here. Outlines, as their etymological past as "List of x topics" indicates, are not articles (i.e. prose), but are structured and annotated lists. I think it would be prudent to make sure that there is consensus that Outlines are problematic before soliciting administrators to remove them. In any case, this discussion ought to be continued at Wikipedia:VPP#.22Outlines.22. Regards,

You ignored Skomorokh's questions and his points, and you failed to answer or address them. I'm still waiting to read what you have to write in answer to Willscrlt's and Skomorokh's posts. Consider those questions re-asked and the points re-raised here by me. What are your answers?

To paraphrase Skomorokh: POV forking and unintentional duplication aren't issues here, so WP:CFORK does not apply. You haven't shown how outlines are content forks that violate the cfork guideline, and you haven't shown how outlines have created "tremendous damage" as you mentioned above.

I look forward to your replies with great anticipation.

The Transhumanist 21:10, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, dab, you asked this at Portal talk:Contents/Outline of knowledge#namespace discipline in May, but never responded to the replies there.

I've left further notes in reply to your query at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists#sneak addition of various other "types of lists". Hope that helps. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:46, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Dbachmann, you keep talking about outlines as if they are the spawn of satan, maybe, and I don't mean to offend, you just need to get a grip and move on, they're not hurting you, or the wiki as a whole so until the point at which they are, which I doubt will ever come, just leave it. Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 14:27, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

There are many problems with moving outlines to portal space

1. They aren't portals. They're outlines, a type of list.
2. Lists moved to portal space will be effectively buried. Portal space doesn't show up in searches by default, and when they are added to search results via "my preferences" the subpages of portals make the search results unreadable and useless.
3. Besides showing the structure of a subject, outlines serve as tables of contents. How useful is a table of contents if you remove it from the book?
4. Moving outlines to portal space will cause confusion. Many outlines (thousands) aren't titled "Outline of" yet - do those go too? And timelines are historical outlines, which adds hundreds more. But if Wikipedia's tables of contents go, why not its indexes too? Why would one type of "article list" be in portal space and not the others? What about indexes?
5. More confusion: the best outlines are evolving into de facto glossaries (though hierarchically structured). Are glossaries to be moved as well? Or will the outlines that qualify as glossaries be moved back to article space?
6. An avalanche could ensue, taking all lists with it. Almost all lists are either outlines or indexes (the rest are either tables or glossaries). Some would argue that outlines are merely article lists, even though they are more than that. But indexes are more clearly article lists (plain lists of article links) than outlines are. So surely they'll be next. And there are thousands of alphabetical indexes in article space - just track the compactTOC templates via "What links here" for a small portion of them (2000+). There are many more aphabetical lists than this without the templates. Lists of people could follow (alphabetical lists of people articles are biographical indexes), and lists of places (alphabetical lists of articles about places are geographical indexes), etc. What about glossaries? They aren't any more annotated than the best outlines. Are all lists to be moved to portal space? See domino effect.
7. If outlines are moved to portal space and turned into subpages, accessing them will be much more difficult. Typing in "Portal:Outline of knowledge/Outline of whatever" will get old very quickly.
8. Some portal developers will insist on merging outlines into portals' topics lists, burying them even further, and disrupting the set. The scope of portals' lists and outlines differ, so the outlines so merged would likely be extensively trimmed, defeating the purpose of outlines. The formatting of portal topic lists also differs, and is much harder to work with and maintain.
9. Outlines would stagnate along with portals, wasting 8 years of development.

I seriously doubt the community will back a move of outlines to portal space.

Sincerely,

The Transhumanist 20:44, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

none of these points hold any water. — Dbachman — continues after insertion below

Correct. They hold validity, as will be made clear in my answers to your points below. And thank you for posting your criticisms of outlines. Each point you raise forces us to rethink through the rationales for outlines, their purposes and roles on Wikipedia, and how to explain them better. These are good things, resulting in a better understanding of and refinement of outlines.

"eight years of development" is a joke. "Six months of attacking Wikipedia's integrity" would be more like it. You have created this page in January this year. The WikiProject dates to October 2007, where in this revision you are still very clear that outlines are "part of the Wikipedia:Contents navigation system". I have no issue with that. Outlines are part of Wikipedia's content indices. You only started spamming article namespace in a bad way in 2009. — Dbachman — continues after insertion below

Outline articles have been on Wikipedia since the beginning, but you already knew that, because you and I have covered this ground before (which means you are being incredulous). They simply weren't called "outlines". They were variously titled "List of x", "List of x topics", and "List of basic x topics". In the guidelines they have been referred to as "structured lists". Structured lists make up about half of the lists on Wikipedia (thousands). The other half are mostly alphabetical lists (indexes).

Most of Wikipedia's navigation system is in article space, because that's where most interlinking takes place. That's what navigation is: hyperlinks. All links included in articles are part of the navigation system. And yes, outline articles are part of Wikipedia's navigation system too, as are the "See also" sections of articles, and infoboxes, and navigation templates, and disambiguation pages - all of which are displayed in article space. Part of the navigation system is outside the main namespace (portals and categories), but the number of links those contain pale in comparison to the volume of links contained within the encyclopedia itself.

List articles, including outlines, serve 2 functions: their primary function is to show the structure of a subject - the topics it consists of and the relation of the topics to each other. Their secondary function is to provide links to the presented topics. Note that this approach is also applied in the fundamental design of all articles, to all of Wikipedia in fact.

Your outline pages are not "portals", they are subpages to a single portal, namely Portal:Contents. — Dbachman — continues after insertion below

No, they are articles in the article namespace. They have never been subpages of the portal you mentioned. That portal only includes top-level lists that don't match the formatting of pages in the main namespace. They are heavily graphically formatted with background colors, etc. The list of featured articles is there, and the top-level list of list articles, the top-level list of outline articles, the list of glossaries, etc. But the articles themselves (featured articles, list articles, and outline articles, and glossaries) reside in the main namespace and always have.

Nobody is disputing the validity of list articles. List articles list items that have encyclopedic notability. Your outline pages list Wikipedia articles and are as such self-referential. They do not have any referent outside Wikipedia and hence cannot be argued to pass WP:NOTE. — Dbachman — continues after insertion below

Any topic that is linked is an article. That does not make them any less topics. They don't stop being English terms when you put link brackets around them. All articles, including list articles and outline articles use links in a dual purpose fashion to present information and to point to further information. I think the multipurpose function of hyperlinked words is pretty cool.

The contents of articles are not subject to Wikipedia's notability guideline. That guideline clearly states "The notability guidelines determine whether a topic is notable enough to be a separate article in Wikipedia. They do not give guidance on the content of articles, except for lists of people."

All internal links refer to another location on Wikipedia and in that respect they are self-referential, but those aren't the instances of self-referentiality that are advised against in Wikipedia's Self-references to avoid guideline. Here's the correct context: "if an article itself becomes famous or is the subject of a joke told by Jay Leno, it should not report this about itself." You shouldn't have removed that statement and inserted your own point of view in its place. WT:LTOP failed to acquire community consensus.

Outline pages are not a "spawn of satan". They are article indices. As such, they do not belong in article namespace. That's all. If you think that moving these pages will "bury" them, well tough, every page in Portal space has authors that invested time in it, and if they are "buried" this will mean that there is no interest in them, because they are not useful. If they are useful, they will not be "buried". — Dbachman — continues after insertion below

Your use of terminology is awkward. "An index" is an alphabetical list. Outlines are not indexes.

Lists are defined as a type of article. And as such, they belong in article namespace. Both indexes and outlines (structured lists) are types of list articles.

The most powerful contribution of outlines to the encyclopedia is the combination of their information and navigation purposes. Aside from the information presented by an outline's tree structure, outlines also include information in the form of annotations, section leads, etc. For examples, see Outline of anarchism, Outline of cell biology. Development takes time, and over time the quality and richness of outlines will grow.

You have created hundreds of "articles", and you are not maintaining them. You have just dumped them in article space and left them to rot. You cannot defend your hundreds of pages as passing WP:NOTE in any way. And you are refusing to recognize that this is what you have done. Already, your "contributions" have caused a lot more problems than they are ever going to be worth. --dab (𒁳) 07:54, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Dab, you just told a blatant untruth. I assume you are not willfully lying, so it must be because you are making wild assumptions without checking what is really going on. That is very uncool of you. I have all the outlines watchlisted, and it displays a huge list of edits on these every day! Outlines are under continuous vigorous development. Not only do I work on outlines and outline adminstration the majority of most every workday, but a team of highly skilled editors has formed whom have been working hard on these pages for the past year, and that team is growing.

The subject of each outline article passes Wikipedia's notability guideline, otherwise we wouldn't have regular articles on these subjects in the first place. As in the titles of other list articles, the subject is preceded by the type of article the page is. Therefore, there's also "List of", "Index of", "Glossary of", and "Timeline of" (another type of outline) articles.

I hope I've helped you and others understand outline articles better. Thank you for your time.

The Transhumanist 20:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

well good, because I do hope the outlines see vigorous development by interested editors. I fully understand the concept behind "outlines". I fully understand their potential utility. They are part of Portal:Contents, which is a highly respectable project, and peace to anyone investing time in it. The problem isn't with outlines, it is with you and your blatant misconduct in touting the project. --dab (𒁳) 09:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

They aren't subpages of Portal:Contents, and never have been. They are list articles in the main namespace. The purpose of Portal:Contents is to list articles from the main namespace, including featured articles and list articles (including outline articles, index articles, and glossary articles - note that almost all list articles are either outlines or alphabetical indexes, even though the vast majority of them haven't been renamed to "Outline of" or "Index of" yet); and to list the navigation pages from the other namespaces as well (portals and categories). The concept that lists should be subpages of portal:contents is a POV you've been pushing, but it is not the state of the 'pedia. The current practice for lists is covered in the list guidelines. The Transhumanist 15:36, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I always have a feeling that outlines are just something that's half-portal and half-list. It certainly leans towards the "list" side so quite frankly, I don't like the idea of outlines. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:24, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

international organization membership and going beyond the basics

Hi all, I think this edit [1] upping the number of international organization memberships to well over 70! is a clear example where we should NOT go, per Wikipedia:Outlines#Be_careful_not_to_go_beyond_the_essential_topics. Lengthy lists of minor organisations is obscuring the issue. Do you agree? Arnoutf (talk) 20:22, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I think it's fine to develop sections in this way in outlines. But once they reach this point of development, they should be split off as stand-alone lists, and the summary style be applied to the section (using list content instead of prose, of course). What do you think? The Transhumanist 20:34, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

My take on this is that a stand alone list is useful and that the outline should refer to that list (using e.g. a main article pointer), and only mention the most important ones. A list of 70+ organisations would in my opinion block readers from continuing reading the outline, losing all information after such a list. For that reason I would not expand first and summarise later; but make sure it never expands beyond a reasonable length. Arnoutf (talk) 20:49, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

There's no way that I know of to make sure it never expands beyond a certain point. By default, we notice a section is too large after the fact. Then we clean it up. Can you think of another way? The Transhumanist 22:02, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you, there is no way that an outline could cover every single aspect of an issue; it should only cover the core of the topic. For readability, for relevance, etc. Minnecologies (talk) 20:56, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

For the record. The original editor (Buaidh) introducing the long list has taken my comment to heart and moved the lengthy list to a more relevant place. Much appreciated, thanks. Arnoutf (talk) 17:52, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Related discussion

A relevant discussion is taking place at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists#sneak addition of various other "types of lists". The Transhumanist 23:44, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The flaws with outlines on Wikipedia

There are two main problems that the recent development of outlines encounters. Basically, the intended ground they cover is redundant to main articles, navigation templates, and Categories. Main articles are supposed to be comprehensive (especially Featured Articles, which get the most exposure out of any Wiki pages because they are displayed on the main page), nav templates allow for easy navigation and organization between related articles, and categories arrange pages hierarchially. The other is that they are ultimately lists and should be treated at such, but often aren't (especially when it comes to naming; "outline of" isn't intuitive to most people, but "list of" is).

That's not even getting into run-of-the-mill structural and conceptual flaws I have encountered with scores of outlines (copying and pasting article leads wholesale into outline pages; making outlines for subjects that have pages under 30kb, thus making them ripe candidates for merging; often egregiously incorrect hierarchial arrangements of links by editors unfamiliar with the subject they are making outlines for; including the outline nav template which only covers broad outlines but ignoring subject templates; crosslinking both the main subject and outline pages with "main article" link templates, which completely ignores the sort of page hierarchy the outlines strive to sort out). But really, those are the main flaws with the outline initiative, and they must be addressed. WesleyDodds (talk) 09:27, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

If pages being exposed to the light of day leads to sensible merges, that's a good thing. If non-sensible merges are being performed, then we need to look at the merge discussions. Outlines are neither here nor there on that. I am in favour of outlines in no small part because I think they'll help editors to see what's missing more effectively. Secondly, the categories pages are not particularly helpful. I don't think I've ever used them to find things (if I know what I'm looking for I just do a search). Outlines on the other hand, can be a tool for discovery. Categories are far more unwieldy than outlines, and far more chaotic to manage than an outline could ever conceivably be. Thirdly, I'm surprised that you've only noticed inexperienced editors are making egregious edits on outlines rather than wikipedia in general ;-). Seriously, it sounds as if you are trying to say that outlines are too powerful/important/potentially controlling to be left to your average editor. You're not the only one making this kind of argument - that outlines are (a) of no use to anyone (they'll find categories just as good) and at the same time (b) it'll be disastrous for wikipedia if we have outlines because people will want to use them and we can't control their development adequately. Clearly there is something about outlines that makes some editors nervous; but I can't help feeling that the criticisms are similar to original fears that the wikipedia project could never seriously work.

What needs doing? I suggest that all outlines are semi-protected as a matter of course, to aid communication between editors (IPs, like Ingrid Bergman, don't talk much) and to help egregious editors disegregise themselves (I'll add that word to wiktionary once I'm finished here). Secondly, there needs to be a culture of adherence to more or less generic outline formats, and clear sets of rules to be followed. Specific outlines should not involve much creativity at all.

The third general point I want to make is that outlines could be a very helpful tool, but there's nothing compulsory about using them, and I can't see them undermining the whole project as some feverish opposition suggests (not you, WesleyDodds, I hasten to add). I disagree with having links at the top of pages as that would be privileging this particular way of organising information, but at the bottom is fine.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 16:17, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Right now my main worry is that outlines are being made when they are unnecessary/redundant. There seems to be a rush to make them without really analyzing if they are needed for a specific article. General rule of thumb with any article is if the main articles is under 30kb, you should probably merge any subarticles you can into it. Also, what are these? Articles? Lists? Disambiguation pages? Because there are certain quality guidelines that need to be adhered to for these various formats, but the outlines by and large ignore them, instead focusing on hieriarchies without context and slapping the lead from the main article on the page. WesleyDodds (talk) 21:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit lost...

Of course one of the consequences of my not having much time to participate in Wikipedia these days is that I find myself out of touch from time to time. I would be interested however in tracing the roots of this venture. Presumably, given that it involves the fairly major step of introducing a whole new type of content to the mainspace, there was some kind of RfC or Village Pump discussion that decided that this was a good thing^TM. And presumably, this was advertised widely, listed on TEMPLATE:CENT and those good things. But oddly, I can't seem to find anything like that. Could someone kindly point me in the right direction? Thanks, WJBscribe (talk) 12:36, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

See the history of Portal:Contents/Outline_of_knowledge, which goes back to 2001 (under various names, primarily "List of basic topics"). It didn't change too much for a few years after that, but it's been growing rapidly since 2007. More detail is more complicated, how much do you want? :) -- Quiddity (talk) 17:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm looking for the discussion where it was decided that having Outline of Foo articles in the mainspace was a good thing to have. The move from one subpage of Portal:Contents to many mainspace pages strikes me as quite major and I'm surprised not to be able to find where it was discussed. WJBscribe (talk) 17:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Portal:Contents was originally named Wikipedia:Category schemes, and looked like this until Transhumanist and others started overhauling it.

The page currently called Portal:Contents/Outline of knowledge was originally named Wikipedia:Basic topics, which in 2003 was linking purely to mainspace lists.

There has been much discussion, much of it in large venues (Village pumps, the Sidebar redesign project, etc) so it is widely known about, but there was no "original thread asking permission". Many (but not nearly all) of the past discussions are collated at WP:OOKDISC.

If namespace issues are your main concern, see my replies addressing that at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists#Outline namespace issues. Hope that helps. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:51, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

But in 2003, it was linking "ordinary" mainspace articles, not ones beginning with "outline of". Perhaps I could phrase myself this way, a number of articles have been renamed "Outline of foo", and a number of articles have been created with such a title. Where is the consensus for having articles called [[Outline of foo]] in addition to [[Foo]]? For that matter, it might be helpful to know when the first "outline of" article was created?

As to the discussions you link to, they certainly explain why you think having "outline of" article in the mainspace is good for the project, but they don't help me discover whether your viewpoint is widely held (or indeed whether this issue has ever been discussed widely amongst the community). WJBscribe (talk) 19:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The page that is now titled Outline of biology is the same page as was originally titled "Biology basic topics" in 2001 (see earliest page history).

The titling of the group of pages was discussed in many of the threads linked at WP:OOKDISC. One of the main threads was at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 28#Major rename proposal of certain "lists" to "outlines", but there are many others. They were initially all named "Foo basic topics", then "Basic foo topics", then "List of basic foo topics", then "Topical outline of foo" or "Topic outline of foo", and currently "Outline of foo". (I commented on this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Outline of knowledge/Archive 2#Name of this set of pages.)

The current title-system matches that used by Britannica in their Propaedia (see Wikipedia:Comparison of Wikipedia's and Britannica's outlines of knowledge for other details). -- Quiddity (talk) 19:50, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I don't know the answer to your (WJScribe's) questions having just discovered Outlines recently. But yours prompted a few questions of my own: isn't Wikipedia about being bold? Do we need to have a community-wide discussion before something like this is done? (Further, is "community-wide" discussion even possible?) If the articles are thought by editors to be useless, they will be AfD'd. If they are useful, they will be developed. Just my thoughts. Tiamut^talk 19:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

This type of content has been around about as long as Wikipedia has. They're "structured lists" (one of the two main formats of lists included in the list guidelines), renamed to their more WP:COMMONNAME: "Outlines". That's the English name for structured lists. They've been on Wikipedia as long as lists in general have - the other main format, that has been around just as long are alphabetical lists. Structured lists and alphabetical lists make up the vast majority of lists on Wikipedia - the rest are tables.

In September 2008 a set of structured lists called "Lists of basic topics" was renamed to "Topic outlines of", and in March 2009 the titles were simplified to "Outlines of" to describe the lists' format more accurately and differentiate the pages from indexes (alphabetical lists). Prior to this, both structured lists and alphabetical lists were titled "List of" - their formats weren't differentiated in their titles, which was a bug in the system (2 types of pages competing for the same titles). So structured lists now had a name of their own.

Working generally from the top subjects down, other structured lists scattered around Wikipedia have slowly but surely been being cleaned up, renamed, and added to this collection, resulting in an ever improving integrated system of outlines. I've been working on structured lists (outlines) since 2005 (initally under my previous account name User:Go for it!), but they have been around since long before me.

List formats (including structured lists and alphabetical lists) were initially covered in the second edit to WP:STAND, back in 2003. That section in the outline today hasn't changed much.

The Transhumanist 03:51, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Move to portalspace

In the past months, I have been more of a reader of, than an editor of Wikipedia. So, as a reader of Wikipedia, I'd like to say that I find Outlines - in mainspace - to be misplaced and confusing. When I was looking for information on a topic, Google presented me with "Outline of (whatever it was)", and I was utterly confused and lost by the link directory presented to me. It took me a few moments to realise that this wasn't, in fact, what I was looking for.

The "root" of the Outline of Knowledge is located under Portal:Contents. It follows as logical to me that all other OOKs should be in Portalspace. The fact that Google etc won't pick them up is a benefit. Users should be directed to OOKs from the main article - by means of either a strapline (not so good) or a "See also" box, the sort of which point to wikinews and commons. The difference, as far as I can see, between lists and OOKs is that OOKs are pretty redundant to their parent article in mainspace. Lists are perhaps redundant to categories, but the difference here is that categories are not in mainspace... ultimately, I see OOKs as being an outline of a topic - I think that is the idea. Portals would be a lot better to read and better to use if they took this form, in some way. Thus I propose moving all OOKs to portalspace. Martinp23 20:27, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Or better yet, why not an Outlinespace? This is clearly not the same thing as a portal, but it is not exactly an article, either. @harej 05:34, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Please check out this month-old thread Wikipedia_talk:Stand-alone_lists#Outline_namespace_issues to get the majority of the meat of the matter. Moving to portalspace is problematic, and creating any new namespaces is problematic - Details and links in that thread. Feel free to ask about anything that isn't specifically addressed though :) -- Quiddity (talk) 06:14, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I do remember reading that a while ago - what I'd really prefer to see though is a proper community wide discussion about this, rather than (like this discussion indeed!) hidden on some talk page and (perhaps inevitably) ending up with several of the few users heavily involved in Outlines pointing at various documents they've created while set out, quite as if they are policy, why things should be as they are. To contest a specific point - in your closing comment on that thread you state (in caps) that Lists, Lists of Lists, etc have always been in mainspace. However, Outlines are not simply lists of lists and while they are closer to indices, it is perhaps about time that, since the outlines project has done a job of bringing all the info together, to put it into a sensible place. Mainspace certainly is not fit for purpose and I fail to see any real justification for it over putting them somewhere more logical, such as portalspace or "outlinespace". Perhaps we could have an RfC or Centralised Discussion? Martinp23 20:07, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure people suggested that exact thing (taking the matter to RFC or VP or etc) a number of times in that thread! Also in that thread are links to previous discussions about new namespaces, or about moving groups of pages to an existing namespace. I keep recommending that people read them before starting a new proposal, so that the past mistakes/tangents/distractions can be avoided, and so that all the issues that need to be considered are included - otherwise the proposal will once again get bogged down in "but what about ..." subthreads. E.g. Pure navigation pages like those in Category:Lists of lists and Category:Indexes of articles and Category:Disambiguation pages, etc. In contrast to (subjectively-)encyclopedic pages such as Timeline of architectural styles and 1920s and Outline of anarchism, etc.

I'd be happy to help or advise on a draft discussion-opener, but I'm not going to start it myself again (I started the Nov 2007 discussion[2]). -- Quiddity (talk) 21:01, 25 August 2009 (UTC)